Friday, December 09, 2005

Canadian Handgun Ban - Follow-up

The proposed handgun ban in Canada has been a hot blog topic the last day or so, and I've got a thought or so to add to the mix.

First, Canadian liberal leader Paul Martin only proposed the handgun ban as a part of his campaign promises if his Liberal party gets re-elected. It's not the law, at least, not yet.

Now, hadguns are already very tightly controlled in Canada, and it's been that way for roughly sixty years.

If the Liberals do not get re-elected, the gun ban will not occur. If they DO get into power, it MAY occur, or maybe not.

I'm kinda thinkin' that Mr. Martin made this proposal knowing full well that the prairie provinces, the Canadian counterpart of the American "Red States", would go ballistic in outrage.

Maybe this was sort of a straw man deal, with full intention to "compromise" at something still more restrictive that what they've got now, but not as extreme as full and outright handgun bans.

I think this is only a political tactic to slip in some more restrictions, while lulling the Canadian gun owners into a position of saying to themselves, "Boy, are we lucky we stopped the total handgun ban, and we only had to give up........".

That's what I think is going on here, but I think the politicos might just have "misunderestimated" the Canadian people, as liberals often do.

2 Comments:

"Maybe this was sort of a straw man deal, with full intention to "compromise" at something still more restrictive that what they've got now, but not as extreme as full and outright handgun bans."

Yes, that would be the "incrementalism" I discussed in my recent post fisking one of Bitter Bitch's letters she got.

Incrementalism is the only way that the gun-banners can do it. If they tried to pull a Paul Martin here, there would be blood in the streets, and they know it, so they pull this straw-man dealio.

BTW, MugWug says that it isn't a Federal Law per se, it is a proposed law for the provinces to adopt, so they might actually opt out of it. That give the Liberals up North some wiggle room, just in case it turns out that the Cannuckians want to keep their handguns.

It could well turn out that we gunnies will owe Mr. Martin a big favor, because now that he has pulled this stunt, it kind of takes the surprise out of it for the anti-gunnies here, and it will make it much more difficult for them to pull off something like this if they get the White House in '08.

I think most of us considered the toppling of the government to be premature, we seem to think the conservatives can't wrest total control from the Liberals despite the recent scandals.

Polls, for all the good they are, seem to support this opinion.

At best I figured we would face another minority government after the election, and a return to status quo. Most likely with a slight shift but the parties represented almost identically as they were before the no-confidence vote.

While the liberals would still lack the ability to govern entirely on their own the NDP would continue to wield its strategic position like a club, and would likely not oppose anti-gun legislation, if the liberals made certain other concessions in exchange for their support.

You're right of course, this is an election promise, and may in fact be abandoned or watered down come the day.

Indeed it is not law yet, but most of the firearms owners I know are frustrated by the current system (examples of which would be the 4 months it took to properly register my .308 M1 and the two months I have been trying to obtain my "Authorization to Transport" restricted weapons to and from the range...that'd be my AR15 and the handguns we've discussed so much to date).

We're already bound by tightly restrictive laws, the idea of further hoops drives most gun owners insane, especially as when it's all said and done it has zero effect on the bad guys.